


hot summer nights

by quarantine_writer



Category: Outer Banks (TV)
Genre: F/M, I want my own jj can you tell?, Idiots in Love, JJ Has Feelings For Kiara (Outer Banks), Kiara Has Feelings For JJ (Outer Banks), Mutual Pining, Platonic Cuddling, Smoking, basically just fluff, sharing the hammock, so platonic guys, tiniest bit of angst, we have some star gazing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-26
Updated: 2021-02-26
Packaged: 2021-03-17 16:20:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29719878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quarantine_writer/pseuds/quarantine_writer
Summary: After an evening spent with the rest of the Pogues, JJ and Kiara stay outside for a little longer, looking at the stars and thinking about their feelings.
Relationships: JJ & Kiara & Pope & John B. Routledge, JJ & Kiara (Outer Banks), JJ/Kiara (Outer Banks), Sarah Cameron/John B. Routledge
Comments: 18
Kudos: 48





	hot summer nights

**Author's Note:**

> Hi!! This is my first ever fic and I feel like I've stared at it for so long that I could probably recite it, so I decided to just post it!
> 
> PSA: I have no idea how punctuation works with quotation marks so fingers crossed I got it right :)
> 
> Enjoy this fluffy thing I wrote on a whim a couple of days ago, I hope you like it!

It’s an unusually dry night in the Outer Banks for July, warm enough for the pogues to sit round the firepit at the Chateau well into the early hours of the morning, but without the normal stickiness of the salty air blowing in off the marsh.

Kiara loves nights like these, where it’s just the five of them and some chill music, would take them over a kegger at the Boneyard any day. Just lying in the hammock with a joint between her lips and JJ’s fingers tracing patterns on her ankle. He gets extra touchy when he’s high. Or drunk. Or sleepy.

There are blankets scattered around the 5 of them, as well as many empty beer bottles after a night of partying. The smouldering joint Kiara had just put out in an old can she was using as a makeshift ashtray (“I don’t know why you bother with that Kie”, “oh, would you rather I just threw my trash in the ocean JJ?” Pope had had to intervene before their bickering escalated as it often did when Kiara started lecturing on the environment) was showing its effects on the pogues as they were beginning to doze off in their respective seats.

JJ and Kiara were sharing the hammock as they usually did with their heads at opposite ends, a blanket shared between them. Pope was in one of the old folding chairs, that sunk so low to the ground he was mostly resting on the hard dirt and grass beneath it, which he had grumbled about but JJ had eloquently reminded him that “you lose you lose”.

It took several minutes for the pogues to stop laughing in their definitely-not-sober state and correct him. JJ had argued that he meant what he said and maintained that it actually made more sense and was always correct, as you could wake up and still win but you can’t win if you lose. Kiara had to agree with that last point, but she blamed it on the weed.

Looking over from her spot in the hammock, she sees Sarah practically asleep on John B’s lap, the latter murmuring something no doubt sappy and gross in her ear while stroking her back, and kicks JJ lightly in the shoulder, dislodging his hand from where he was still absentmindedly stroking her skin.

“Ow, what the fuck Kie?” JJ whines, rubbing the spot but she rolls her eyes, says “I hardly touched you”, and lifts her chin towards the couple opposite them, a smirk playing on her lips. JJ follows her gaze and snorts before looking back over at her and pretending to gag. Her laughter catches John B’s attention who looks up and shushes them, pointing to Sarah, before realising that they were in fact laughing at him.

“Fuck you guys,” he mutters but it lacks any real heat. “You’re only jealous,” he says primly, “think we’re going to head inside anyway, see you losers in the morning.” John B gives JJ and Kiara some half-hearted finger guns while manoeuvring into a standing position with Sarah in his arms, almost overbalancing entirely.

Kiara looks over at Pope who has slumped over in the offending chair, his chin now resting on his chest in a way that is sure to give him a crick in his neck.

“Yo, JB, can you carry Pope inside too?” Kiara asks teasingly, “Or does that courtesy only extend to Sarah?”. JJ laughs at that and Kiara looks over to see him grinning at her. It makes her stomach swoop.

“Once again, fuck you, see you tomorrow.” And with that John B and the sleeping Sarah make their way into the Chateau for the night. JJ gives a sarcastic salute to his back and calls, “night asshole!”, which also serves to wake Pope.

He blinks tiredly at the pair still in the hammock and yawns, says “what time is it?”. Kiara locates her phone under JJs foot, which she slaps away and clicks for the lock-screen, a selfie of the four of them on the HMS Pogue sticking their tongues out. “It’s 2:18”, Kiara replies around a yawn of her own.

JJ whistles, says “way past your bedtime Popey”. Pope slowly gets to his feet and nods in agreement, oblivious to JJs mocking.

“John B and Sarah go in?”, he questions, tilting his head to the fishing shack behind him. Kiara confirms this fact with a nod.

“Dibs on the spare room!”, Pope yells before running full pelt towards the Chateau, circling back for his flip flops and then again for his phone which he’d left on the chair, only falling over once in the process.

Kiara watches idly as what Pope had said hits JJ and he curses colourfully, trying to extract himself from the hammock and the blanket in order to beat him to the spare room. The hammock tilts dangerously almost flinging Kiara out of it and she shrieks and throws the beer can-turned-ashtray at JJ’s retreating back, at which he cackles and calls over his shoulder “what about the oceans Kie?”.

She throws up her middle finger and lies back down in the hammock waiting for the loser of the race to return outside, secretly hoping it’s a certain blue-eyed boy. She sees he’s left both his phone and flip flops outside and can’t help the way her heart leaps at the thought that he wasn’t prepared to go inside just yet. Neither was she.

Kiara sighs and stares up at the sky, the stars shining through the leaves and branches above her head, thinking of her best friend. She likes to tell herself that she’s got a hold of this silly little crush (because that’s all it is of course: a crush. A crush that she’s had since she was thirteen. A crush that she thought she’d grow out of. A crush that has only grown in its four years of existence). She likes to tell herself that it only really comes out in full force these days when she’s under the influence. She likes to tell herself a lot of things.

Sometimes, she thinks JJ might know about it. Sometimes, she thinks JJ might even feel the same way. But then he sleeps with some touron and she kicks herself for ever believing that for a second. She tries her hardest not to let her emotions show when that happens, to appear as unaffected as she should be, but she thinks Sarah might have an idea. Kiara doesn’t know how long Sarah will be able to go without bringing it up, but she’s grateful that that’s not happened yet. 

Kiara knows she shouldn’t feel this way about her best friend, but she can’t help the butterflies she gets in her stomach when JJ smiles at her, or tries extra hard to make her laugh when she’s had a long day at the Wreck. She can’t help the way her heart melts a little bit when he offers her his hand to help her onto the Pogue, or throws his arm around her shoulders when she complains of the cold. It’s the way he always waits until he sees her resurface after wiping out on her surfboard before going back to watching for incoming swells. It’s—

She’s pulled from her thoughts when she hears footsteps on the porch and looks over to see JJ coming back towards the hammock with two beers, a rolled joint and something else in his hands. He comes to a stop by her side and throws something soft and warm and smelling like JJ at her face. 

\--It’s that. She doesn’t even remember mentioning that she was cold but he knew and went to get her a sweater anyway.

She has to try very hard not to keep it there and inhale the familiar and comforting smell of salt, weed and axe body spray. She pulls it away from her face muttering about him messing up her hair, hoping the blush on her cheeks isn’t visible in the dim light coming from the porch, to see JJ opening the bottles with his teeth, joint behind his ear. She slaps his leg lightly, the only part of him she can reach without moving too much, and says, “you’ll break your teeth doing that one day.”

JJ glances down at her and rolls his eyes. “Sorry mom,” he says cheerfully, handing her a beer which she takes and smiles her thanks. “Pope beat me to Big Johns room,” he says less cheerfully. “That leaves the pull-out for us”, he says wiggling his eyebrows at her, and in a display of boyish humour, mumbles, “ha, that’s what she said. Get it? Pull out?”.

Sometimes Kiara really doesn’t understand where her crush comes from.

She places her beer between her thighs in an attempt to hold it there while she puts on the sweater JJ had given her, but JJ just gives her a funny look and picks it up, his fingers brushing her bare skin slightly. “Now that’s a good way to spill this freshly opened, very expensive beer” he says with a frown, placing the joint between his teeth.

She simply looks at him and deadpans, “JJ you stole this beer”.

“Doesn’t mean it wasn’t expensive”, he replies with a shrug before throwing himself back down on the hammock, this time next to her, sending it swinging once more, smiles innocently at her when some beer sloshes over the top of both bottles in his hands. Kiara just rolls her eyes and continues pulling the sweater over her head, revelling in the warmth it provides her, and steadfastly ignoring any new butterflies it brings.

When she’s got the sweatshirt on and is pushing her arms through the sleeves she looks over to JJ for her beer, to find him still looking at her, now with a soft expression on his face. He quickly looks down at the bottle in his hand and passes it over to her, takes a swig of his own, before digging his lighter out of his pocket and lighting up the joint. “Thanks”, Kiara says quietly. JJ looks back over and smiles at her with a small nod.

They both lie back in the hammock for a few quiet minutes sipping their drinks and passing the joint back and forth, fingers brushing every now and then, with only the slight creaking of the hammock, JJ and Kiara’s high playlist, and the far-off crash of the ocean breaking the silence.

After her third shared joint of the evening, everything is pleasantly hazy for Kiara as she looks up at the stars once more, humming along quietly to whatever song is playing from JJ’s tinny phone speaker. It’s in moments like these when she forgets herself slightly, and the fact that she’s perhaps being more touchy with JJ than she strictly should be, but she reasons that JJ must do too, as he leans his head down on her shoulder and squints up at the sky. 

“What are you looking at?” JJ whispers, close to her ear, breath hitting her neck, and she hopes that if he notices her shiver, he’ll attribute it to the slight breeze in the air.

“The stars dumbass, what else?” she whispers back with a slight giggle. JJ turns his head and looks at her with a lazy smile. “Yeah but like what are the consonant things called?”.

Kiara looks over at him and their faces are only a few inches from each other. “You mean constellations babe,” she says teasingly, not noticing the way his eyes flick down to her lips as she speaks, and looks back to the sky, “and fuck if I know what they’re called. They look pretty and that’s good enough for me.” 

“Yeah.” JJ agrees, not taking his eyes off of Kiara’s face. He passes her the joint for one last drag before she leans down and stubs it out on the ground, having thrown her makeshift ashtray at JJ when he was being an ass. JJ kindly does not mention this fact and ignores her less than environmentally friendly action in favour of looking back at the stars.

“Should we name them ourselves?” JJ asks Kiara, as she leans back into the hammock rolling into JJ’s side slightly from the shift in the weight on the fabric. “Hmm?” Kiara asks.

“The stars.” JJ responds. He points up at one shaped particularly strangely, squints and says, “that one kind of looks like someone sitting on the toilet”. Kiara snorts out a laugh and follows JJ’s finger trying to find the constellation. JJ waves his finger around tracing the shape that only he can see and Kiara humours him and says, “okay that one’s the pooping man”, with a giggle.

They scan the sky for several more moments, until JJ gasps and says, “that one looks like a llama!”

It does look like a llama, in JJ’s defence. 

Kiara can tell they’re both pretty high when they find a constellation that looks like Pope. She spots it and points it out to JJ who laughs so hard they both almost fall out of the hammock. He tries to take a photo of it as evidence for when they tell the others tomorrow, but the stars don’t show up on the camera. JJ pouts about this for a minute, which Kiara finds adorable, but she pats his head and says, “it’s their loss that they didn’t see it”. 

She secretly likes that this is something they have just between them.

When Kiara’s hand leaves JJ’s head, he whines and nuzzles his head back into her palm, and she laughs, but obliges him and starts stroking his hair. JJ hums and closes his eyes, sinks down further into the hammock, head on her shoulder, with a content smile on his face, and Kiara can’t help but stare at him. In this secret, shared moment, it feels allowed somehow. Like it’s okay that Kiara is enjoying this far more than she perhaps should. Like it’s okay that she wishes she could lie here all night, running her fingers through JJ’s soft hair.

That she wishes she could maybe stay here forever.

JJ opens his eyes, and the shocking blue of them catches her off guard. It always does. He smiles softly at her, and for a moment she smiles back before remembering that this isn’t allowed. That JJ doesn’t want to stay like this forever. 

She tugs on a strand of his blonde hair and says, “your hair is really soft on the rare occasion you actually wash it you know”, looking away from his face that is dangerously open, vulnerable.

JJ frowns for a second, his smile dropping, before he smirks and says “the ocean is literally a giant bath. It washes my hair just fine”. She’s glad he’s stopped looking at her with that soft look on his face that makes her think she could kiss him and just maybe he might kiss her back. Because she doesn’t know what to do with that.

“Oh babe, that’s so not how it works”, she says with a laugh that she hopes sounds less forced than it feels. Based on JJ’s curious look, it didn’t.

She quickly runs her fingers through his hair again to distract him, scratching her nails lightly along his scalp. He happily closes his eyes again and leans his cheek back on her shoulder before whispering cheekily, “I used your shampoo”.

Kiara gasps in outrage at the crime and sits up, glaring down at the blonde who looks unhappy at the pause in his hair stroking. “You what!” Kiara cries indignantly, “I left that here one time, when I was late for work and you’ve been using it?”. JJ looks up at her sheepishly, and says, “not just me! John B did too, he actually used it first, said it made his hair look ‘luscious’, or something, whatever that means, I just thought it smelt good and you wouldn’t—”.

Kiara cuts his rambling off with a sigh, supposes she should have known better than to leave something expensive within reach of three seventeen year old boys. “It’s fine”, she assures JJ, feeling bad for yelling at him. JJ looks up at her, jutting his lower lip out sweetly. She eyes it, wants to kiss it away. Instead she smiles reassuringly and lies back down next to him pulling the blanket back up from where it had fallen when she sat up. 

She thinks JJ must be sleepy, as he nuzzles his face against her collarbone and throws an arm over her stomach above the blanket when she moves her hands back into his hair. She smiles to herself, losing herself in the moment again. She thinks she can allow herself this for one night, to lie with JJ and imagine it could be something more. Even if it will hurt more tomorrow morning than usual.

She begins to braid his hair gently, the strands long enough for several small braids, which she thinks make him look adorable, but when doesn’t she find him cute. Especially when he’s sleepy and cuddly like now, his hair falling over his forehead slightly.

She accidentally tugs on his hair too harshly and he whines, mumbles “ouch Kie! Stop that”, lifting his hand to lazily swat hers away from his hair, but she just giggles and says, “stop complaining. I’m just braiding it”.

She taught JJ how to braid her hair years ago, when she realised he could never sit still, was always looking for something to occupy his hands. He often did it subconsciously now when they lay in the hammock on slow summer afternoons, loved to feel her hair between his fingers.

He was delighted the first time she had put two braids in his hair to match hers, and wore them proudly for several days, but Kiara suspected he just couldn’t get them out. 

She finishes the braids and moves back to stroking her hands through the rest of his hair. JJ pushes his forehead into her neck and she inhales sharply, hoping he won’t hear. Hoping he can’t feel her heartbeat going double speed in her chest. She can feel his breath hitting the skin at base of her throat, wishes she could feel his lips there instead. 

“You smell good”, JJ mumbles into her neck, pulling her from her embarrassing thoughts, glad for his closed eyes, so he can’t see her blush that only intensifies at his words. 

“I smell like you, I’m wearing your sweater. Are you saying you smell good?”, Kiara jokes quickly, to get her mind to move on from what he’d just said. It doesn’t work as now she’s just thinking about how she’s wearing his sweater. God she’s a mess. She needs to nip this crush in the bud once and for all. Tomorrow. She’ll do it tomorrow. She’s too tired right now and JJ’s almost asleep as well. 

“Mmmm, can I have my sweater back? I’m cold,” JJ murmurs. 

“Absolutely not you gave it to me”, Kiara replies outraged at his audacity and pulls the blanket up so it covers his entire head. “There you go, that should warm you up”, she says sweetly, laughing as he tries to pull it back down. His hands tickle her sides under the blanket making her gasp and drop the fabric.

“You cheat!” she exclaims and JJ chuckles, hair adorably ruffled from being trapped under the blanket, as he rises up on his elbow above her. He looks down at her, a mischievous smirk on his face, eyes darkening ever so slightly as he leans down to whisper, “all’s fair in love and war babe”. 

Kiara’s eyes track down to his lips and she swallows, praying to all that is holy that JJ can’t tell how much he’s affecting her right now. Except she gets the feeling that that is exactly his intention. 

Averting her eyes from his face, she pushes him back down to the hammock next to her, missing the disappointment crossing his face as she does so. She pulls the blanket up once again and says, “here, we’ll share this, and I’ll keep the sweatshirt”, trying to gain some control over the situation before she completely embarrasses herself, if she’s not already done that.

“That hardly seems fair, but fine Kiara, I’ll allow it”, JJ replies with an exaggerated sigh, and a smirk on his lips. “But if you steal the blanket I’ll put my cold feet on you”, he threatens.

“You wouldn’t dare!”, Kiara cries, half-serious, glad that JJ has returned to their more relaxed banter as she could feel her resolve to keep JJ firmly in the friend-zone beginning to slip. Well, more than it already had anyway. She has to remind herself that JJ is keeping himself in the friend-zone no matter what she wants.

“Try me Kie”, JJ murmurs from his position next to her on the hammock. “I’m too tired to go back inside, can we just stay here tonight?”, he asks.

Kiara looks over at him, eyes drifting over his fluffy hair that’s fallen over his forehead, down to his closed eyes that she loves so much, his mouth that has relaxed into a small smile even as he slowly drifts into sleep. “Mmhmm”, she responds because how could she say no, “we’ll regret it in the morning though, when we’ve been eaten alive by skeeters and wake up in about two hours with the sunrise with cramps in our backs.”

JJ cracks open one eye to see her grinning at him. He snorts and says, “shut up Kie, and just live in the moment.” 

She thinks she wouldn’t mind living in this moment for the rest of her life.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, let me know your thoughts if you want, and any prompts for other fics you want to see!!
> 
> P.S. I can only blame the that’s what she said joke on my recent binging of the office


End file.
